


To Combat Loneliness

by emeralddarkness



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 09:35:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7165763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeralddarkness/pseuds/emeralddarkness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone must take care of Thranduil, and as far as Legolas is concerned it might as well be him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Combat Loneliness

It was difficult, sometimes.

Often.

Always.

He would say something, or see something, and still look over his shoulder reflexively to speak so she would laugh, and when she was never there it would feel as though his soul was slashed all over again. Thranduil was dying a slow death of a hundred thousand cuts, and could not allow himself to bleed. He tried not to let it show. It didn’t always work.

“Ada?” Legolas said, when he had brought a picture he had just drawn full of green and it had felt like a knife twisting in his heart, “Ada,” again when the sun managed to find its way through the darkening forest and a few rays slipped through the slot canyon slivers that opened at the sides of the caverns used as stables, “Ada,” when he’d brought him outside and the stars shown high and cold overhead like the beginning of the world. “Ada, what’s wrong?”

Thranduil hedged his secret sorrows deep within his heart, because a King could not show weakness, a King could not be heartbroken and grief stricken and unsure how to continue moving (he might not have been able to, if not for Legolas), and Legolas was so very _young_. “Nothing, little leaf, nothing is wrong.” But Legolas, who could be so like his mother had been, was nothing if not persistent in his curiosity and, although neither a King nor a Father should show weakness, neither can guard his heart for always.

Thranduil was sorting papers, documents and agreements, one night when Legolas did as he’d made himself accustomed and had clambered up his robes into his lap. Thranduil had barely paid him heed, wrapping his free arm around him to maintain some kind of control over a child who had always been too energetic for his own good and who might have tried climbing the back of the chair next if left to his own devices, and continued slowly making his way through a stack of paperwork. It had been a perfectly ordinary evening, and the paper he picked up maybe half an hour later, was perfectly ordinary as well, but it had still made him freeze, and carefully retreat into himself.

“Ada,” Legolas had asked a few moments later, climbing to his feet on top of Thranduil’s thighs and peering at the page that had been set down again, then back to Thranduil’s face. “What’s wrong?” Something of the simple earnestness in the face of the child and the question being asked and perhaps his state in that moment made it impossible to answer with ‘nothing’ as he normally did; it wasn’t nothing, it would be something for the rest of time.

“It can be lonely, without your mother here,” he said at last, because he wasn’t sure how else to put it, but he needed to say something.

Legolas stared at him a few moments with a solemn expression on his little face and then sat carefully and slipped to the floor again and then raced out of the room, which in turn made his father concerned that he’d said something wrong, that he should as usual have said nothing. Legolas was back, however, before he had been gone long enough to truly fret, along with a little doll he’d had since he was one. It was a little ragged by now, well loved, but well made enough to be still whole and quite strong. Legolas climbed back into Thranduil’s lap, and automatically he put his arm around him again. Legolas carefully reached out and set the doll on the desk, arranging him, and then turned and looked up.

“I can’t always be here, but now Hethuri can keep you company when I can’t,” he said, and leaned back against his father.

Thranduil sat for a few moments, speechless, until Legolas wiggled around under his arm until he could stand again, and then wrapped his small arms around Thranduil’s neck.

“You can hold him sometimes, he won’t mind,” the child whispered against his father’s hair, and Thranduil wrapped his arms around him.

“Thank you for telling me, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Love you, Ada.”

“And I you, little one.”


End file.
